George Gordon Meade

Summary

George Gordon Meade appears in this project’s holdings in one specific capacity: as Captain of Topographical Engineers and Superintendent of the US Survey of the Northern and Northwestern Lakes, his name is printed on the 1855 Lake Survey chart “North End of Lake Michigan Including the Beaver Island Group” (North End of Lake Michigan Including the Beaver Island Group (1855 Lake Survey chart)), the earliest systematic American chart of the Beaver Island archipelago held by this project. A handwritten inscription on the copy held here, dated Detroit, 1 April 1861, reads “Presented to the Geographical & Statistical Soc’y of N.Y. with Capt. Meade’s compl’ts.” This article is scoped to that chart and Meade’s role in producing it; it does not attempt his wider biography, for which this project holds no primary source. confidence: established for the facts stated on the chart itself.

History

Superintendent of the Survey of the Northern and Northwestern Lakes

The chart’s printed credit line identifies him in full: “GEO. G. MEADE, Capt. Top’l Engineers, Sup’t Survey N. and N.W. Lakes.”¹ The underlying trigonometrical survey of the Beaver Island group was conducted in 1854 and 1855 “under the orders of Captain J. N. Macomb, Topographical Engineers”; Meade’s printed title on the sheet identifies him as the survey program’s overall superintendent at the time this particular duplicate was struck and presented, rather than as the officer who ran the 1854-55 fieldwork in the islands themselves, which the chart credits to Macomb and a named group of assistants (Lieut. W. F. Raynolds and others).¹ See North End of Lake Michigan Including the Beaver Island Group (1855 Lake Survey chart) for the full transcription of the chart’s triangulation credits, light-house table and sailing directions.

The 1861 presentation copy

The specific print held by this project is a “Duplicate” bearing a handwritten inscription, transcribed directly from the full-resolution scan: “Detroit April 1st 1861. Presented to the Geographical & Statistical Soc’y of N.Y. with Capt. Meade’s compl’ts,” over the printed form quoted above.¹ The date places this presentation six years after the 1854-55 fieldwork the chart depicts, and about two months before the outbreak of the Civil War drew Meade away from the Lake Survey to war service. No further detail of the presentation — for instance, which individual member of the Geographical and Statistical Society of New York, if any, received it — is given on the sheet or established from sources held here.¹

Separately from this project’s own holdings, George Gordon Meade is widely known in general historical reference as the Union general who commanded the Army of the Potomac at the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, two years after this inscription was written. That later career is not documented in any source held by this project and is noted here only to avoid confusion with the pre-war engineering officer whose name appears on the chart; it is not the subject of this article.

Significance

This chart, and Meade’s printed credit on it, is this project’s only documentary link between Meade and the Beaver Island archipelago, and it predates and corroborates several details later recorded in Scott's New Coast Pilot for the Lakes (1902) — a lighthouse table listing four Beaver Island lights and no light yet at Squaw Island, and a set of sailing directions between Beaver Harbor and the wider Lake Michigan shipping track.

Open questions

• No biography of Meade specific to his Lake Survey tenure is held by this project; his dates of service as Superintendent, and the extent of his personal involvement (as opposed to titular credit) in the Beaver Island survey specifically, are not established here.
• The recipient of the 1861 presentation copy at the Geographical and Statistical Society of New York is not named on the sheet.
• Whether other Lake Survey charts in this project’s holdings also carry his printed credit, and whether any others carry a comparable handwritten presentation inscription, has not been systematically checked.

See also

• North End of Lake Michigan Including the Beaver Island Group (1855 Lake Survey chart)
• Scott's New Coast Pilot for the Lakes

Sources